Quote of the Day II: Andrew Sullivan On the (Supposedly) Emerging Budget Deal

Our political Quote of the Day #2 comes from Andrew Sullivan on (guarded) reports about what is a possible debt ceiling limit deal:

The good news for the economy: there will be no further debt ceiling moment until after the next election. It’s not done till it’s done, of course. And the magic moment will be when Boehner tries to sell this to his caucus. But this is a good sign that we will postpone jumping off the cliff for a while.

Notice the “for a while.”

Because as Matt Yglesia’s notes, we are now in a new era: a new era in which politicos see that “hostage-taking politics” works. This time it’s the Tea Party movement against a Democratic President. Is it outside the realm of possibility that seeing such hard-ball tactics work might inspire Democrats to use it against a future Republican administration?
Once the bar is lowered, it’s often hard to get it back up to where it was before..